Tag Archives: Boulder Housing Partners

I hasten to add that this program (and others like it) is a revolving door, from the streets to an expensive new apartment and back again, so in the long run it’s only the homeless shelter / services industry which benefits: More Homeless People = More Money. The do-gooders perpetrating this fraud on the public are not about to “end homelessness,” so if you see their lips moving you should know they’re LYING.

BTW, many Housing First residents have died from alcohol-related causes, because sobriety isn’t required to stay in the program. Many of these folks are so pickled they really don’t appreciate the difference between an apartment like the one shown above and a spot underneath a bridge.

A few years back, one of the crooks in charge of this boondoggle tried to recruit the Homeless Philosopher to reside in 1175 Lee Hill; he stated that I would be able to set a good example for others. My focus, however, has always been on providing a minimal level of housing and services for EVERYONE on the streets, something that could long since have been accomplished for the tens-of-millions of dollars already spent in Boulder County alone.

1) Death toll at 1175 Lee Hill Housing First in Boulder, CO may have risen to six. I need to speak to another source to confirm what I heard this morning from a resident of the facility, but this would be right in line with what has gone on at Karluk Manor in Anchorage, AK (that city’s Housing First program for chronically homeless alcoholics / drug addicts with a dual diagnosis of mental illness; a more recent story indicates that there have now been eleven deaths there since it opened in December of 2011). That Boulder Housing Partners and Boulder Shelter for the Homeless (which collaborated on this 31-unit project with an initial cost now estimated at $8M) would seek to cover up a shockingly poor track record is no surprise, either, but what in blazes is wrong with the local news media? Are Daily Camera “reporters” deaf, blind, and stupid?

2) Disturbance requiring intervention of Boulder PD this morning at the illegal RV and car camp located on Front Range Dr. just west of Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. Every spring or summer these folks are told to move along, when the volume of complaints to police from neighboring businesses and residents becomes too great to be ignored — but BSH itself apparently couldn’t care less about one more undesirable feature of the Homeless Ghetto they’ve created.

The 31-unit, $8 million facility opened its doors in November 2014 after overcoming intense neighborhood opposition. Many north Boulder residents believed the facility would become a magnet for the kind of unsavory behavior they said already afflicted the area due to the presence of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless just to the north.

Many opponents were skeptical about the Housing First model, which does not require participants to be sober or address mental health or other issues in order to receive housing, and others worried that by locating housing right next to the existing homeless shelter, participants would be less likely to leave behind old friends with problematic behaviors.

In a study of the first year of operation, though, Boulder Housing Partners, which owns and manages 1175 Lee Hill, found that neighbors had not placed a single call to the police about the facility or its residents, nor had they made any complaints to property management.

Here’s the comment I left on BHP’s Facebook page, where they posted this so-called study:

“There were no calls to the police from the neighborhood related to Lee Hill or its residents. Likewise, BHP, the property manager and owner of Lee Hill, received no complaints from the neighborhood.” WTF? Who do you think you’re kidding? I don’t own a cell phone, but I had to ask others who do to call 9-1-1 several times because of drunken HF residents who were creating problems in the area around N. Broadway & Laramie, the entrance to the Dakota Ridge neighborhood. You can tell all the WHOPPERS you like, but those of us who live in north Boulder know the TRUTH. And I’ve frequently made verbal complaints to staff at BSH regarding specific troublemakers at 1175 Lee Hill, right next door. And how do you explain Case Manager Chris Byrne actually standing on the corner of U.S. 36 with Donna helping her fly a sign, right before you finally woke up and threw her butt out?

BTW, this same comment I left on the BSH Facebook page was deleted.

It’s all of a piece, anyway, the Homeless Ghetto which has been created in this neighborhood. If 9-1-1 dispatchers in their call logs and police officers in their written reports record the address as 4869 N. Broadway — even if a specific incident occurs next door at 1175 Lee Hill — it’s just ingrained habit from the almost-daily emergency responses made to this area. I’m not going to pay the city for their hours of research, at something like $30/hour, to try and separate it all out. When I’m present in the neighborhood, I’ve seen with my own eyes that Boulder PD responds to the Housing First facility itself, and for calls about HF clients elsewhere in the neighborhood.

Those of you who follow this blog know how often I’ve written about the problems these do-gooders are enabling . . .

All of which brings me to the point of today’s post. Continuing excerpt from the Daily Camera report:

Gail Promboin, a longtime north Boulder resident who strongly opposed locating the facility so close to the homeless shelter, attributes the success in part to the participation of former opponents on the advisory committee that developed the management policies.

Promboin, who continues to serve on a neighborhood advisory council to 1175 Lee Hill, said she was “totally surprised” by how well things have gone. But when asked if she was wrong to oppose it, she conceded she was “partially wrong.”

“I was partially wrong, and partially, we made them focus very clearly on the challenge of having that facility right next to the shelter,” she said.

She praised Boulder Housing Partners for working with neighbors and designing an attractive building. A mural of a hot air balloon by north Boulder artist Sally Eckert graces the Broadway side of the building.

“For people who are new to the neighborhood, I don’t think they know what it is because they keep a low profile, and there is no reason to know,” she said.

Here’s what I posted to my own Facebook page:

The news media keeps referring to Gail Promboin as a critic of Housing First at 1175 Lee Hill, who lives nearby. Here’s a picture of Gail (L) together with Betsey Martens (R), the executive director of Boulder Housing Partners, at the groundbreaking ceremony for this project — and they’re all smiles.

Should we be surprised? I doubt Gail has ever seen one of the pickled idjits from either Housing First or Boulder Shelter right next door, passed out in a ditch belonging to the Dakota Ridge HOA.

I think she might have been a plant — someone who pretended to be opposed but was then “won over” by the wonderful work of the do-gooders.

I’ve never seen a crowd like this show up to help pick up empty beer cans and vodka bottles left behind by their chronically homeless little darlings — it’s usually just me and a laborer or two from the small commercial district in the 4900 block of N. Broadway.

Here are the links to just seven of my blog posts on Housing First at 1175 Lee Hill in general, and its cast of characters in particular:

True, because HUD funds are involved in the 1175 Lee Hill boondoggle, a registered sex offender like Kerry Whitfield won’t be eligible for housing there — but he’ll be right next door at 4869 N. Broadway (BSH) with as many as a dozen others. It’s all a part of the Homeless Ghetto being created in north Boulder.

Maybe when I return to this neighborhood in a short while, and begin camping outside once again, I’ll see Betsey Martens and Gail Promboin with trash bags in hand, picking up empty beer cans and vodka bottles. More likely they’ll just keep pretending that everything is peachy keen, and I’ll be picking up the bums’ trash myself . . .

The nonprofits in Boulder, CO have run roughshod over the neighborhood around N. Broadway & Lee Hill, turning it into a homeless ghetto focused on “compassion” for chronic alcoholics and registered sex offenders.

From the Anchorage Daily News comes this report, which I find very interesting as it relates to Boulder, CO’s current homeless shelter at 4869 N. Broadway and the proposed 1175 Lee Hill Wet House project right next door. Quoting from the article —

Alleva’s nuisance abatement suit, filed July 6 in Anchorage District Court, claims that clients of the shelter and cafe are engaging in activities such as “assault and battery, the use and sale of drugs and alcohol, littering, the discharge of urine, fecal material, snot and vomit, public copulation, camping, misconduct with firearms and other weapons, and gang related activities” in the area on and adjacent to his property, where he runs an auction business. He claims that the organizations that serve them haven’t done enough to stop illegal or unsanitary activity and trespassing.

The suit names Bean’s Cafe and Catholic Social Services, the parent organization…

It’s impossible to get an accurate “census” of the homeless people living in Boulder, CO or any other city in America, and even a so-called ballpark figure is rarely achieved in our city, certainly not by the MDHI Point-in-Time Survey for the past couple of years. My best guesstimate is that there are ten times as many homeless men and women on the streets or in emergency shelters as are in the local shelter/services industry’s hugely expensive Housing First and Ready to Work projects, used by the do-gooders to appeal for still more funding from both public and private sources. See below:

Bridge House Ready to Work “transitional living” at 4747 Table Mesa, well in excess of $4 million for initial purchase and conversion.

Housing First at 1175 Lee Hill “permanent supportive housing” (a collaboration between Boulder Shelter for the Homeless and Boulder Housing Partners), far north of $6 million for initial costs of land and construction.

Ongoing operating costs at these two facilities are not included in the figures above . . .

Doing the arithmetic to arrive at a per capita cost for each one of the 79 residents involved, we come up with the figure of roughly $127,000.

Bear in mind, most of these folks will be back on the streets — or dead — without gaining any long-term benefit whatsoever. And meanwhile, we have hundreds of others still on the streets or in dangerous, dirty, and degrading emergency shelters.

This is why I refer so often to a travesty of compassion by local do-gooders in Boulder County, CO. Apparently, however, many citizens of means are satisfied by good intentions without regard to negative outcomes for the homeless caught up in this exploitation of More Homeless People = More Money.

(Originally published on May 1, 2013. I’ve e-mailed this post to Boulder City Council and the City Manager this morning.)

By Max R. Weller

I’ve mentioned this concept several times in the past, but it’s worth repeating. Here’s one plan, which dovetails perfectly with Boulder’s (alleged) concerns about homelessness and the environment. Truly cost effective, compared to the 1175 Lee Hill Housing First debacle which is costing well over $6 million before a single one of the 31 units is occupied.

According to the 2012 MDHI Point-in-Time Report, there are 750 homeless people on the streets in this city (2013 results for area cities, from the count in January, will be released sometime this summer).

Clearly, if the goal is to provide housing for as many of Boulder’s homeless residents as possible, it makes NO SENSE to provide only 31 chronically homeless, single adult alcoholics/drug addicts (having a…